The boy in the photo was sent from his home in Casamance at the age of 5 to Dakar to study the Koran at a kind of religious boarding school. Such is the culture of religious schools in Dakar ( as opposed to their village versions where the children are generally treated much better), many of the kids are sent out to beg for their food and are very often beaten for not bringing in enough money. They are usually malnourished, abused, and never get a modern education (although that being said, there are some schools where the children get a good education and are well treated).
My friend Pape, a poet, film writer and ex-NGO worker, has been working with a school in his neighbourhood of Dakar for 2 years. He has managed to build up a good relationship with the teacher and change the way things are done in the school, so much so that the teacher has now set up his own association where he and 6 other school teachers try to find alternative sources of income and educate other people about the rights of children. The children in this school no longer beg, nor are they beaten, and they now do extra curricular subjects such as French and photography as well as play football with children from the neighbourhood, which is not allowed at other schools.
One of Pape's projects is buying chairs and tents for the school, which are then rented out for ceremonies, providing a regular income for the school. This money gets the children hot food, clothes, medicine, and means they are no longer forced into the streets to beg.
I have spent a few days at the school and they are really lovely happy boys, despite the terrible conditions they live in. And I would really like to help them buy more chairs and clean up the place where they sleep, which is one tiny dirty room in a derelict house where 15 of them sleep on a mat on the bare floor.
This is where my swimming challenge comes in.
You all know that I'm doing the swimming challenge right, and now that I've done the Ngor Island swim I think I might be able to do the Goree Island swim, which is 3 times as far. I've decided to raise money for Pape's school by asking people for sponsorship.
The money will go to Pape to be spent either on chairs to rent out or on cleaning up the room where they live, perhaps buying mats, basic medicine etc. I would also like some of the money to go to Pape, who in 2 years has never received a penny for his work, despite being presently out of paid employment (although he has just had his film script accepted in Paris).
Since sending out an email to friends about this, I have raised £200, which can buy a lot of things for the kids. If this generosity keeps up, I'm going to split the money between the school and another informal project which Pape has going with some friends of his from the States, who regularly donate money. When a 13 year old girl came to his house in Dakar asking for work, he asked her why she wasn't at school. She said she had left her village to find work and no longer went to school. Pape has now found enough money to support her and another young girl through school and university.
If I raise enough money I will give this money towards supporting another young girl through her education.

If you would like to sponsor me, please email me and let me know how much you'd like to give. I will have a PayPal account set up or if you have a British bank account you can do a direct deposit or send a cheque to my address in London.
In other (swimming) news, the pool was shut yesterday so I decided to go body boarding instead. I have new flippers and thought it would be a good idea to test them out on the wild piece of coast near my house. I cycled off with my board strapped to the back of my bike and arrived an hour before sunset, beautiful clear water and only two surfers in it.
"There are sea urchins everywhere" says this guy who has to come down to the beach to tell me how to get into the water (the rocks and pounding waves evidently confusing me).
Well, I'm not going to tread on one, say I to myself, and plunge into the rocky frothy water and paddle off into the sunset (literally).
"Why aren't you taking any of the waves?" says this not unattractive surfer guy, as I bob up and down pretending I'm just happy hanging out without taking any of the waves. I don't tell him it's because the waves are 10 feet high and I'm terrified that one of them will take me on my board and dump me on the sea urchiny rocks.
"What, you've never done this before?" he asks, "Be careful" he adds, and looks at his friend with raised eyebrows.
Well, it was fun (I have done it before a few times, just not right there, with the rocks and the huge breakers and the spiny sea creatures) and relaxing, and a nice thing to do after a day in an office.
But getting out was a whole other deal. Feeling the eyes of the surfers on me as I start for the first time in my life praying, and paddling really really quickly, I reach the rocky shore just in time to get my flippers off before a wave comes and, crunch, put my foot down on something really quite sharp. But since my whole body was hurting, a hurt foot didn't seem like too big a deal and after having a conversation with another surfer about how my board is designed for a small child (he held up an adult one to show me how inadequaltely equipped I am- "I don't know who's going to fix your back if this board snaps mid wave"), I peddled off home.
Arriving home, (there's not much more, I promise), I find the power is cut. And it stays cut until 4pm this afternoon. So with my computer battery dead, I spend much of the day swatting flies (oh, and swimming 1km at lunch time), and only see the black poisonous-looking spine in my foot in the morning, when I also see that I can't walk. Poor Naomi is given a needle to dig it out.
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